Matt Damon is one of the most successful actors in Hollywood. He is 52 years old and has already starred in 85 movies. Google claims his net worth hovers around $170 million.
In general, I like Matt Damon’s movies. Elysium was great, as was, of course, Saving Private Ryan. Interstellar, The Martian, and the Ocean series never get old. And then there was Bourne.
Damon just nailed that one. He played a conflicted amnesiac assassin who, throughout four full-length films, traveled the globe gratuitously killing strangers while trying to discover who he really was. Matt Damon did a superb job of taking Robert Ludlum’s magnificent words and translating them into something we could experience on the big screen. I’ve seen them all several times.
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Action Hero
As Jason Bourne, Matt Damon comes across as quite the bad man. His close combat skills both with weapons and without are pretty epic. Heck, he once killed a dude with a rolled-up magazine. Alas, however, that’s all just fake make-believe.
Out here in the real world, action movie star Matt Damon has little use for such stuff as private gun ownership. While interviewing in Australia, he was quoted as having said, “You guys did it here in one fell swoop and I wish that could happen in my country…It’s wonderful what Australia did…And nobody’s rights have been infringed, you guys are all fine.”
Damon’s Idea Of Freedom Smells Fishy
In 1996, Australia enacted sweeping gun control legislation that allowed the government to confiscate 650,000 guns from private citizens, effectively disarming most of the Australian populace. I spent some time in Australia soon thereafter back when I was a soldier. The Aussie gun nerds in uniform with whom I worked were mightily lamenting the irrevocable demise of their liberty.
My point is simply that Matt Damon is pretty typical. Most of those tough Hollywood studs are Big Government anti-freedom Leftists. Damon, for his part, is a committed supporter of the Democratic Party, having personally hosted a fundraiser for Elizabeth Warren. Mark Ruffalo (the Hulk) and Chris Evans (Captain America) are even farther Left. However, it was not always thus.
Origin Story of Sterling Hayden
Sterling Hayden starred in 59 films and 18 television programs. By all accounts, his was a fabulously successful Hollywood career. However, throughout it all, he was quick to explain that acting was just a means to an end for him. Sterling Hayden climbed up onto the big screen just to support his limitless adrenaline addiction. He started young.
Hayden was born Sterling Relyea Walter in 1916 in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. His dad died when he was nine, and his mom remarried. His stepdad, James Hayden, formally adopted him and changed his name to Sterling Hayden.
He dropped out of school at age sixteen to take a job crewing an oceangoing schooner. He traveled all around the Americas from New London, Connecticut, to Newport Beach, California. Along the way he ran a charter yacht and crewed a steamer to Cuba and back eleven different times. His first Captaincy was the square rigger Florence C. Robinson. At age 22 he commanded the Robinson on a 7,700-mile voyage from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to Tahiti.
Newfound Success
Upon his return from Tahiti in 1938, Hayden had his photo fortuitously taken while participating in a Fisherman’s Race. This image ended up on the cover of a magazine and was seen by an executive for Paramount Pictures. That earned him an invitation to screen test for the movies.
Hayden stood 6 feet 5 inches tall and reliably filled a room. He got the part without really trying. Paramount later marketed him as “The Beautiful Blond Viking God.”
Hayden had this to say about his newfound success, “I was completely lost, ignorant, nervous. But the next thing I knew, Paramount made me a seven-year contract beginning at $250 a week, which was astronomical. I got my lovely old mother and bought a car, and we drove to California…I was so lost then I didn’t think to analyze it. I said, ‘This is nuts, but, damned, it’s pleasant.’ I had only one plan in mind: to get $5,000. I knew where there was a schooner, and then I’d haul ass.”
Sterling Hayden Goes To War
And then the world came unglued. With World War 2 looming large, Sterling Hayden abandoned Hollywood and enlisted in the Army. He was deployed to Scotland for training but suffered a severe ankle fracture and was medically separated from the military. He then returned home and tried to buy a schooner. However, he was unable to raise the cash.
Many guys who had been legitimately injured in military service might have just called it a day. However, that’s not the way Sterling Hayden was rigged. Once his ankle healed, he enlisted in the Marine Corps under an alias, apparently to avoid being tied to his previous injury.
A Strange Promotion
Hayden actually thrived at Parris Island and went straight from boot camp to Officer Candidate School. Once he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant, Hayden got a curious call from Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan. At the time, Donovan carried the misleading title, “Coordinator of Information.” With FDR’s backing, Donovan eventually birthed the OSS (Office of Strategic Services). The OSS was the precursor to today’s CIA. Sterling Hayden had just become a spy.
Still operating under the nondescript alias “John Hamilton,” Sterling Hayden–ship’s captain, shadow warrior, and movie star–was deployed to the Mediterranean to take the fight to the Nazis. And this he did…for the next three years.
Hayden lived and worked in enemy-held territory. He captained a motor launch running weapons, supplies, and ammunition to Yugoslavian partisans serving under Tito. Hayden parachuted covertly into Croatia to help organize resistance cells. He fought the Germans and Italians during the Naples-Foggia campaign and organized partisans into rescue teams to repatriate downed Allied fliers. By the end of the war, Hayden was a Captain.
American Silver Star
Now appreciate what that meant. This towering 6 foot 5 inch giant of a man masqueraded as a fisherman, running guns under the noses of the Nazis for years. He didn’t wear a uniform. At any moment he could have been discovered, captured, tortured, and killed. He earned the Bronze Arrowhead Device for parachuting behind enemy lines in combat. Josip Broz Tito recognized him with the Order of Merit for exceptional valor in action. He earned the American Silver Star for gallantry. The citation for the award read in part, “Lt. Hamilton displayed great courage in making hazardous sea voyages in enemy-infested waters and reconnaissance through enemy-held areas.” Wow. What a stud.
After the war, like so many millions of American veterans, Sterling Hayden came home. His wartime service overseas left him with a deep love and appreciation for his country. During one press conference, he said, “I feel a real obligation to make this a better country – and I believe the movies are the place to do it.”
Short Stint As A Communist
After having served so long alongside communist partisans in combat, Hayden came home with a bit of a soft spot for the Reds. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, this was an unpopular place to be politically. He briefly joined the American Communist Party but soon became disillusioned and left. He eventually testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, this time as a reformed communist. He later said, “The FBI made it very clear to me that, if I became an ‘unfriendly witness’, I could damn well forget the custody of my children. I didn’t want to go to jail, that was the other thing.”
Hayden found plenty of work in Hollywood. Some of his movies were better than others. In 1956, he starred in The Killing directed by Stanley Kubrick. This low-budget outing became a respected classic and eventually landed him a big part in Dr. Strangelove as the warmongering Air Force General Jack D. Ripper who tries to end the world. Throughout it all, however, Hayden acted just to pay the bills. 
Sterling Hayden Traveled The World
He eventually landed that schooner, The Wanderer, and used it to travel the world on the proceeds from his movies. After a particularly acrimonious divorce wherein he was awarded custody of his children, Hayden scooped up his four kids and struck out for Tahiti, defying a court order in the process. Eventually, he remarried and fathered another two sons.
Like most folks who hit it big, Hayden grew introspective later in life. He eschewed Hollywood, for the most part. He came out of retirement to do Dr. Strangelove as a favor for Kubrick. Whenever he described himself in his later years he claimed to be a sailor or writer rather than an actor.
The End For Sterling Hayden
Eventually, Sterling Hayden developed prostate cancer. That’s an eminently treatable condition today, but back in the early 1980’s, we did not have nearly so many good tools. He ultimately succumbed to the disease in 1986 at age 70.
Sterling Hayden was married to three different women. He traveled the world, faced death countless times, and then channeled a little bit of that extraordinarily manly life into his many movies. The Beautiful Blond Viking God was a Renaissance Man indeed.
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